"He thinks it is hardly possible that you will live, captain."

"My wife, chaplain, have you heard from her since your message yesterday?"

"No; we have received no answer. The lines are in the hands of the Government, which needs them; perhaps that is the reason we cannot get an answer at once. hope she will be here."

We

"Does the surgeon say I cannot live long, chaplain ?" "Yes; but you are a Christian man, Capt. Billings?" "Yes, chaplain, I have no fears. I left my place in the Sabbath school for my place in the army. My hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have tried to serve him in the army, and he will not forsake me now. I would like to see my wife," he continued, as his thoughts recurred to that dear one.

66

"Well, captain, if you have anything to say, will you give the message to me?

He asked me to give her his knapsack and sword, and other little things that he mentioned; and if she came, the message he wished me to deliver; and then he seemed to dismiss all these things from his mind, as he lay there calm, peaceful, a dying man as well as a dying soldier, and, above all, a dying Christian.

66

'Now," said he, at length, "don't stay longer with me. Go and minister to the boys, and run in here as you can to read a few words of Scripture to me, and kneel down and pray with me."

After I had prayed with him, he said to me, "Could you have my body embalmed and sent home? I lost my money on the field?"

"Certainly, captain, it shall be done; give yourself no further thought about that."

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At no other time did he refer to it, but passed away as a dying Christian, triumphing over all the horrors of war, over all the sad circumstances around him. It was in the morning at eleven o'clock that he passed away. At five o'clock that afternoon his body was sent to the embalmer's. At ten o'clock that night, as I was busy writing letters from memoranda, taken through the day, a knock was heard at my door. "Walk in," I responded. A man stepped in, inquiring, "Is Captain Billings, of the 20th Maine, here?"

What a question for us to meet! But I thought of the home-link. "Who are you?" I asked.

"I am his brother. I have his wife with me! I have buoyed her up this long way with the hope that we would. find the captain in good condition. Where is he, sir?"

"You have not brought the captain's wife out here with you to-night?" The corps hospital was four miles from Gettysburg.

"No; I left her in town for to-night."

66 Oh, it is well; the body of your brother was sent to the embalmer's at five o'clock this afternoon!”

"Oh! oh!" said he, "I cannot tell her! I cannot tell her! I cannot trust myself to tell her, or even to see her again, to-night!"

The poor man seemed overcome. "I cannot see her," he continued; "I have brought her on, all the way to Gettysburg, and now you must, you must tell her all."

And so our duty was to see the wife and deliver to her the messages and the tokens of dying love of her husband, and speak to her words of comfort in the name of the Lord! His body was carried on to the State of Maine to repose with those of his kindred there.

XXXVI. A PLEA FOR THE CHRISTIAN COMMISSION.

Some account of General HOWARD, of Maine, has been given on a previous page. This gallant officer and decided witness for Christ was one of the speakers at the great meeting in Philadelphia, on the 28th of January, the second anniversary of the United States Christian Commission. Such a man has a right to be heard. No words could be more appropriate to place here, as the last words to linger on our ears as we bring these pages to an end, than the following sentences from the speech of this Christian patriot, on that occasion.

I may be allowed (said he) to speak freely to the friends who are here to-night. Let me tell you one thing which I need not suppress, if I could, and that is, that I feel in my heart a deep and abiding interest in the cause of my Redeemer. I know that this is also the cause of the Christian Commission, and, therefore, I love it, and identify myself with it; and I doubt not that you love it, and will do everything you can for it, for a like reason. And now, I ask you as I am to go back to the field to take up my cross anew, and to stand up night and day, evening and morning, for the cause of him that. I love-that your earnest, importunate prayers may follow me, and that God would bless the soldiers, that evil may be repressed among them, and that when they go into battle they may go without a fear, because they know in whom they have believed.

My friends, I heard a general once say (he was not a Christian General), in reference to General Magruder, on the other side, that he could not be a very brave man, nor have true courage, because he was such a profane and wicked man, and delighted to lead the young into shame and

1 See Chapter III., page 78.

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degradation. I am sure he was right. I assert that the highest type of courage is Christian courage. When your spirit yearns up to God in the prayer, "O, Lord, be my protector, and in this peril let me run under the shadow of thy wing," then you will fear no evil, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

My friends, these things are realities with me. By the blessing of God, by his Spirit, he has enabled me to have a clear conviction that, should he take me away, I shall go to be with him. Not because I am good or holy or righteous; but because I have a Saviour, an all-sufficient Saviour, who is able to save even the chief of sinners unto the uttermost. Therefore I am able to say that I can go into the battle fearing no evil. And would to God, for their sakes, that every officer in the army and every soldier in the ranks could declare, in sincerity from the depths of his heart, that God had done such great things for him!

These to me are settled, solemn convictions, and I speak them freely and frankly, as I am encouraged to do on this auspicious occasion. It may seem to some that it is expressing one's private feelings too publicly; but I think it well for me to bear such testimony in a work like yours, which contemplates this great and all-important result, the promotion of heart-religion and the salvation of souls. And especially do I feel this, in these times of excitement and terror, over the mere temporal accessories of war, the dreadful sacrifice of lives, the horrible sights of wounds, the caring for the wounded and sick, the lamentations for the dead, amid all this I fear that the still, small voice has not always been listened to, the silent and beautiful, though wonderful work of the Spirit of God has not been seen, and its importance felt as it should be in our land. This the Christian Commission is striving to accomplish; it seeks to keep alive the spirit of Christianity among our soldiers.

Their agency is the leaven in our armies. May they leaven the whole lump! It is this only that will prepare us for our liberties. This bond, the bond of Christian love, is the true bond, after all, that shall permanently unite us. There

is no other. We speak of the chains of commerce and trade, of corn and cotton, that will unite the sections of our country,—but these are temporary, fluctuating, perishing links. The religion of Jesus Christ is the lasting bond that connects not only Maine with Massachusetts, and Massachusetts with Connecticut, but Maine with Texas, and Florida with Wisconsin.

We boast of being an asylum for all nations. From England, Ireland, France, Germany, Russia, and almost every country beyond the ocean, come men, women, and children, who settle down in the midst of us. How shall we cause them to assimilate to us? How shall we ever make them good and useful citizens? Will it be, think you, by merely giving them land on which to settle? Will they become one with us, because they grow in material wealth and prosperity? No, no! Nothing but an education, a true education of heart and morals, such as the religion of Jesus Christ imparts, can ever truly and safely assimilate all these heterogeneous elements, and enable us to be truly one people.

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The gospel has its victories to achieve for us as well as the sword. Many of the rebels hated us more before the war than they do now. They respect us much more than they once did, after seeing that we are not afraid to expose our bodies to be burned, if necessary, in a just cause, the cause of our country that we love,- that we shrink from no sacrifice of money, time, or life, in order to maintain and perpetuate the beautiful government that our fathers bequeathed to us.

But this is not all. They have felt, too, the power of